A place where beginners can participate, ask questions, and post their views. However, beginners typically ask a lot of questions about sources, tricks, books, and so on. In fact, all magicians are interested (or should be) in the provenance of tricks, ideas, and related matters. This department will service these needs.

A little while back I read about a relatively common riddle here. It was the one where a traveler gets to a crossroad and each way leads to a very different place...usually 1 way is heaven and the other is hell and each road is guarded by an individual. One tells the truth and the other lies. There is 1 question you can ask of either which would give you the answer as to which road led where. Could any of you help me with the question. Thanks.

Originally posted by merlou: A little while back I read about a relatively common riddle here. ...usually 1 way is heaven and the other is hell and each road is guarded by an individual...

The heaven or hell thing is new, and hardly common. The riddle is a chestnut and one early version had you meeting someone at a fork in the road, and only knowing that if they are Spartan they will tell the truth, yet if Cretan, will lie.

If anyone knows which road actually leads to heaven... let the rest of us know please. It seems the road to hell is easily identified because it is well paved with good intentions ;)

If you like riddles here is an ancient one posed by the fishermen of Crete to some unfortunate guy who drove himself demented trying to unsuccessfully solve it, eventually killing himself.

It is not a trick riddle. The answer makes perfect sense.

If you already know the answer please don't post it before Friday 11th March to give those who like to puzzle over riddles a chance to exercise their little grey cells. Otherwise I'll post the answer on Saturday.

Regarding the riddle posed by Merlou, there is a good application in Apocalypse, Vol 1, N6, June 1978 by Gerald Kosky entitled To Tell The Truth, but I'm (practically) sure that this riddle is 2000 years old

If you are interested in these type of puzzles you should try one of the books by Raymond Smullyan. The books generally introduce a mathematical concept by a puzzle route, but the first third of most of the books is concerned with "liar / truth-teller" puzzles.

"The Lady or the Tiger", "What is the name of this book" and "Alice in Puzzleland" are the most accessible.

Originally posted by Richard Forster: If you are interested in these type of puzzles you should try one of the books by Raymond Smullyan. The books generally introduce a mathematical concept by a puzzle route, but the first third of most of the books is concerned with "liar / truth-teller" puzzles.

"The Lady or the Tiger", "What is the name of this book" and "Alice in Puzzleland" are the most accessible.

Wonderful recommendation! Smullyan's books are great, and I was just about to suggest them myself. As an aside, "Doomo" aka Tony Miller, and the charming Rosie, his boss, have a wonderful magazine called "Channel One", for those of you who don't know it. And, they recently lured Mr. Smullyan into the spider's web. He contributed some material for publication, (yes, he's interested in Magic!), that makes for fun reading. Search for this, it is worth a peek...

And Barrie Richardson, in Theater of the Mind, describes his use of this puzzle with three or more participants, each of whom is holding an object in either their "truthful hand" or their "lying hand". Apparently, large audiences can be held spellbound watching you find the object by running through this puzzle repeatedly.

Originally posted by Quentin Reynolds: If you like riddles here is an ancient one posed by the fishermen of Crete to some unfortunate guy who drove himself demented trying to unsuccessfully solve it, eventually killing himself.

I believe the idea is, if you want to know whether the guards tell the truth or lie, ask what sex they are. You'll be able to tell immediately. Or you could ask how many heads they have.

Unfortunately the puzzle usually allows you only one question, and while this question would reveal very quickly who was lying and who was telling the truth, you would still need another question to find out which road to take.

Richard Forster wrote:If you are interested in these type of puzzles you should try one of the books by Raymond Smullyan. The books generally introduce a mathematical concept by a puzzle route, but the first third of most of the books is concerned with "liar / truth-teller" puzzles.

"The Lady or the Tiger", "What is the name of this book" and "Alice in Puzzleland" are the most accessible.